ECB Should Learn From Florida, Solana’s Opera, IOTA Assembles USD 100M, Gemini Down + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Adoption news

• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposed a program to let businesses pay state fees in digital currencies, part of a series of crypto-related proposals included in the state’s budget for next year, per Bloomberg. The state might also launch pilot programs to explore the use of blockchain technology for vehicle titles and Medicaid payments.
• Cryptoassets show no signs of benefiting society or the wider economy, European Central Bank Executive Board member Fabio Panetta said, according to Bloomberg. He argued that there is no sign that cryptoassets have performed, or are performing, socially or economically useful functions.
• The Opera web browser said they’re joining forces with Solana Labs to integrate Solana (SOL) and support Solana dapps (decentralized applications) in the first quarter of 2022. “Opera will bring direct access to Solana to its hundreds of millions of users, Solana will first be integrated into Opera for Android,” the company said.

Investments news 

• Scalable multi-chain network for smart contracts Assembly, developed by IOTA (MIOTA), said that its early contributors have committed USD 100m in a funding round led by LD Capital and Huobi Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate the growth of the ecosystems, while project teams are invited to reach out directly to individual funds or to the Assembly team to apply for funding.
• DeFi trading platform Slingshot has raised USD 15m in a Series A funding round led by Ribbit Capital. The funds should be used to launch a mobile app, as well as additional blockchain coverage and new trading features.
• Web 3.0 talent network Braintrust has raised USD 100m in a private token sale. The project aims to connect companies with skilled workers in the Web 3.0 space.
• Play-to-earn (P2E) project Rainmaker Guild has announced it has raised USD 6.5m in a seed funding round, per VentureBeat. The platform offers users the chance to “seamlessly play hundreds of P2E games, explore in-game content, get coaching from top global players, connect with Rainmakers around the world, and get access to an innovative NFT lending and borrowing marketplace.”
• Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia (YGG SEA), the regionally-focused subDAO from the decentralized blockchain gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG), has raised USD 15m across two rounds of fundraising. The funding will enable YGG SEA to deliver a targeted offering to the regional gaming community, where the guild will focus on supporting locally developed play-to-earn games and acquiring game assets for the benefit of the guild’s player base, they added.
• Crypto startup Palm NFT Studio announced a Series B raise of USD 27m led by Microsoft’s venture fund M12. The raise will enable the team to scale the Palm NFT Studio’s technology platform and offer it to third parties looking to deploy NFT projects across movies, games, music, and art with regulatory compliance and environmental sustainability, they said.
• Crosschain liquidity aggregator Router Protocol raised USD 4.1m in its second funding round. The funds will be used to further develop Router Protocol and scale up marketing and research activities, they added.

Exchanges news

• Gemini went down today at around 07:30 EST for at least several hours. “All customer accounts and funds remain completely secure,” the exchange said, suggesting to follow their status page.
• Three of the “big four” South Korean crypto exchanges – Korbit, Coinone, and Bithumb – will all start applying the Financial Action Task Force’s Travel Rule of their own accord next month, pre-empting government guidelines on the matter that will not come into force until the spring. Per Newsis, the trio should launch a jointly developed platform named Code that effectively removes anonymous trading in January. The market-leading Upbit exchange aims to unveil its own Travel Rule solution, developed by one of its subsidiaries and named VerifyVASP, a few weeks later.
• Norwegian exchange Oslo Børs, the parent company of the Euronext Growth exchange, decided to admit the Norwegian Block Exchange to trading, after the company had applied for listing on Euronext Growth. The first trading date is expected to take place on 14th December 2021.
• A new survey by crypto platform CoinList shows that their users expect that gaming will be the most in-demand category in 2022, with 56.5% of survey respondents saying that gaming is the asset category they’d most like to see listed on CoinList. Other top requests include decentralized finance (DeFi) (52.1%) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) (41.6%), while infrastructure (28.3%), social tokens (22.8%), and governance (16.2%) proved less popular.

Legal news

• US District Judge John Cronan has chosen a Hong Kong couple to lead the securities-fraud lawsuit against Bitcoin (BTC) mining machine manufacturer Canaan Inc. They allegedly lost the most money, around USD 1.3m, when Canaan’s share prices fell 30% after the company released its fourth-quarter and fiscal 2020 results in April, per Reuters. However, they had filed the information to support their class leadership motion two weeks late, so some other injured parties argued against their appointment.
• The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered judgments against Glenn Arcaro and his company, Future Money Ltd., for the promotion of the BitConnect “lending program.” The judgments order them to pay disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and a civil penalty, if ordered by the court, in an amount to be determined by the court at a later date.

Regulation news

• Clem Agba, minister of state for budget and national planning in Nigeria, is calling for regulation that promotes opportunities from the wider use of digital technology rather than clamping down on it, per Bloomberg. He added that uncertainty in regulating cryptocurrencies risks denying the government and citizens the chance to maximize opportunities from the technology.
• South Africa’s financial regulator is planning to unveil a regulatory framework covering cryptoasses early next year to help protect “vulnerable members of the society from highly risky assets,” Bloomberg reported, citing FSCA Commissioner Unathi Kamlana. The rules, designed in concert with peers like the prudential authority and the financial surveillance board, will establish how trading should be conducted, per the report.